


Something's changed

by Aleonoria (Nelle)



Category: NCIS
Genre: AU after Episodes 7.01 and 7.02, Competent Tony DiNozzo, Not for Tiva Fans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 10:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8575651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelle/pseuds/Aleonoria
Summary: Some insights come in time, some never, and some are just too late.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first translation of one of my own works. Originally postet on fanfiktion.de  
> Because I currently have no Beta-reader I would be thankful that if I had made some huge mistakes you would tell me so I can correct them.

“And why aren’t you searching her?”  
Such a simple question, but the answer burned like fire in his veins. Fire increased by the truth serum this lunatic had given him. Most of all Tony would have liked not to answer, but he couldn’t prevent his mouth to open and the words came out. Words he wouldn’t believe up to that point of time hadn’t them outspoken until now. Because saying it would transport them from a bad dream into reality.  
An unbearable reality.  
“Ziva David is dead.”  
He had hardly said those four words when Tony felt like something broke inside him and additional to the fire of the drug grief, anger and pain were burning inside him.  
It was his fault that Ziva had left D.C. It was his fault that she had returned to Israel and had taken over Rivkins place in Kidon. His fault everything. He knew he couldn’t live with this guilt. Would be destroyed by it, couldn’t look at his own mirror image. And because of that he was now sitting here. Sitting somewhere in the last corner of Somalia bound to a chair and telling this maniac everything he wanted to know.  
Tony let his eyes wander and rest on McGees motionless figure. Also his fault. He had him announced voluntarily. Had taken him on this mission. It would be his fault if something would happen to his partner.  
Finished. Out. Over. Finito. These words were going through Tony’s head over and over again as he was fighting against the enormous longing to say something.

 

When Saleem removed the sack from the person’s head he had pushed on the chair in front of Tony he didn’t trust his eyes. There she was. Ziva. His little ninja. Her face marked by everything she had suffered but nonetheless still beautiful.  
“And? How was your summer?” A silly proverb to prevent that she could realise what’s going on with him, this was something in what he was really good.  
“From all the people on the world it must have been you who found me.”  
Oh yeah, that was something she was good at. Hurting with words as well as with her hands. These deadly but also tender hands.

 

“I guess I couldn’t live without you. And didn’t want to.”  
Amazement, fear, insecurity. All these were for a moment shown in her eyes.  
“Then you are going to die with me.”  
Dying? No. Some minutes ago he wished to die because the world had been an empty and lonely place without her. But now? Ziva’s alive. That was everything he could think about. His little ninja was alive!

 

There she was, in Abby’s arms, still hurt and still appear frightened like a young deer. And in this moment he discerned the truth. She was broken. Broken like a castle of glass. And it was very uncertain if those fragments would ever find their places again.

 

She came nearer, one hand on his cheek softly kissing the other one. This gentle touch revealed what she couldn’t have said before, couldn’t have expressed before and so much more. There had always been unspoken things between them. Above all because of one specific rule. But sometime, Tony swore to himself, sometime he would tell her everything what stood between them. Differently to Jeanne there shouldn’t be, wouldn’t be any secrets between them. Secrets could hurt, could destroy people. And he would do everything that never again pain and sorrow would appear in those beautiful brown eyes.

 

~.~

 

Full of bitterness looked the man at the photo in his hand and entrusted it like so many others before the flames of the small campfire.  
Secrets. In the eyes of his younger self was exactly to see what he thought, what he felt. Almost five years he had stayed. Endured to see her every day but not being allowed to be near her. To see how she started several relationships. Relationships with men who weren’t bound to some rules. Rules that stood in their way to happiness.  
On the day the invitation to her wedding had laid on his desk, his transfer application had been sent to the director.  
He ran his fingers through his hair and his green eyes burned.  
On her wedding day he had been sitting in a plane to Palermo. To bella Italia the home of his ancestors, to his own team. There he had been the last years. He had sporadically had contact with his old people, but Bambino and Abby had visited him.  
His squad consisted of himself, Carmine, Francesca, Marco and Isabella. They all had two things in common: they had at least one Italian parent and spoke the native language fluently.  
When he had detected that Isabella and Carmine were starting something he didn’t cling to this screwy rule. Even though he had adapted some others, not this one. Because it was an idiotic one and only causes pain. Isabella came to the office to visit them from time to time, with the little Bambina. To replace her had been as difficult as with Ziva so many years before. But they had managed it.

 

He felt something running down his cheek and dripping on the picture in his hand. If he wouldn’t know better he would suggest that the two showed persons were a pair of the way of looking in each other’s eyes. But this had never happened. Because of a screwy rule! This picture also found its way into the fire.  
He didn’t want to, but his brain had always been too good at remembering things, the good as much as the bad ones. And so he started to remember what had happened that he now systematically threw everything into the voracious flames.

 

~.~

 

It had been a day as much as one other.  
May, Sicily, Sun. Three words describing the weather perfectly. The whole day had been too good to be true. He had suspected that something was going to happen but could get rid of this feeling. If he hadn’t the news couldn’t had him surprised so much.  
As he had returned from lunch to the office at Quattro Canti in Parlermo Carmine and Francesca had waited for him.  
“Boss, we just received message from D.C. Abby was hardly to understand. There had been an accident. You are to come as fast as possible. Director has given permission to use the jet.”  
He swayed slightly and just grabbed something to keep his stand.  
“Who?”  
His folks had known immediately what he wanted to know and Carmines expression got even more serious.  
“Gibbs.”

 

From the following flight and the taxi drive to the hospital he hardly had memories. But he remembered how he had walked down the long hallways. He hated hospitals. They were totally repugnant to him. He had rapidly found Gibbs’ room and after entering he had wondered that it had been empty. Where was his team? Gibbs had nobody else, his team was his family.  
When the door behind him had opened he had right away known who had arrived.  
The type of moving, her smell, that all had stayed the same.  
“Excuse me, but what do you want here?”  
It had been clear, that she hadn’t recognized him. It had been long time. He had taken his ID out of his pocket and had slowly turned around.  
“Senior Supervisory Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS.” He had lowered his eyes to meet hers, for the first time in years. “Hello Ziva.”

 

In that night Gibbs hadn’t woken up. And neither the next day. When Tony hadn’t been sitting at his bed he had walked through the corridors and had phoned. When Ziva had talked to him about it his answer had been cool and reserved.  
“I am in lead of a department, and also a team. It is my duty to be kept up-to-date.”  
In that instant Ziva had acknowledged that he wasn’t anymore the man who had wished to be transferred to Italy. The bond that had been there once was long ago torn and she dared to doubt that it could be mended.  
“And how are things otherwise? Having someone?” She had tried to talk to him, to fix what had been broken.  
Tony on the other hand had wondered that she was asking that. Especially in this tone. She was married, for fuck’s sake!  
“Guilia. She”, he had faltered and for the first time he had seemed again like the man she had got to know. Like the one who had went without hesitation to Somalia for freeing her. He had seemed lucky, full of life. “She is simply wonderful. When she looks at me in the morning, it’s like the sun rises, even if it’s raining. She is everything for me.”  
“Do you have a picture?”  
He had nodded and taken out his mobile. As background there had been three people: Tony, his arms around the waist of a dark-haired beauty and a little girl.  
“Those are Guilia and Teresa.”  
The little girl – Ziva had not known if her name was now Guilia or Teresa – looked exactly like Tony.  
“You seem happy.”  
“We are.” But something in his voice had made her looking up. He had been hiding something from her. Also something new. She hadn’t longer been able to read him like in the past. In this instant it had gotten clear to her. She had had lost him.

 

“Tony? He woke up and asked for you.”  
He had hung up and had jumped under the shower. His apartment in DC he had had sold shortly after moving to Italy, but the name DiNozzo still guarantied him the suit at Adams House, thanks to his father.

 

He had rushed through the hospital corridors. He just hated everything about it. The sterile smell, the noises, the remembrance of his stay after the plague. Simply everything. When he had approached Gibbs’ room his steps had slowed down. Shortly bevor reaching it the doors had opened and Ziva had come out. In her eyes had been pain but also hope. Of what he hadn’t could say. Not yet.  
“He is pleased that you are here and he can talk to you once more.”  
He had nodded and had gone in.

 

“Tony, it’s quite some time. I know you had been in D.C. now and then, when you had to discuss things with the director. But we hadn’t the opportunity to talk.”  
He had stepped closer, pulling a chair to the bed and had sat down. The years also had left their marks on his former boss, which had been the reason for him lying here.  
His eyes, that hadn’t yet been well when Tony had been part of the team, had failed him. But because of being stubbornly pride the older hadn’t wanted to wear glasses. The result had been an accident from which he would never fully recover. That had been clear.  
“How is your team?”  
“Fine. Isa and Mino are expecting their second child.” His voice had stayed calm. Not really knowing what the older had wanted, especially with that question.  
“You changed the rules?” A kind of lack of understanding had swung in this question. Like it had been some kind of sacrilege even to think about a change.  
He had shaken his head. “Just one of them. The most idiotic.”  
Gibbs had nodded slowly. “The 12, one of the reasons that I’m glad that I could see you once more. Ziva, she … She is not doing well. She is lonely.”  
“She is married!” had it broken out of Tony. Not knowing in which way this conversation would go, he had started to feel uneasy.  
“Not anymore. It didn’t last very long. She discerned relatively fast that she made a mistake. And I…I didn’t want to discern what had been clear to everyone at that time. But I had closed my eyes from it. Tony, please forgive me.”  
“What should I forgive you, Gibbs?”  
“That I haven’t done this earlier.” He had taken a deep breath, than had looked in the green eyes of the younger man. “Tony, from this day on I declare rule #12 for my team as no longer existent. Please come back and become happy with Ziva.”  
He had jumped up staggered about what he had just heard.  
“You can’t be serious.”  
The older man had nodded slowly. “I do. Your place is still free. Come back and lead my team.”  
His green eyes had got colder as he had looked in bewilderment down to the man in the bed. After one disappointed shake of his head he had turned to the door leaving the room, although he had once looked back. Back to the man who had taught him so much but also had taken so much away from him.  
And all his anger, his sorrow, actually all his feelings had come out in two words. “Screw you!”  
Than he had left the building, the city, the land in order to go there where his new and true home was.

 

_The End_


End file.
